Greece's powerful Orthodox Church called on its faithful Thursday to boycott the upcoming movie Da Vinci Code which will be released in Taiwan on May 18, newspaper reports said.
Greece's Holy Synod said it would issue pamphlets ahead of the movie's Greek premiere warning citizens not to go see the movie to "protect the Christian tradition."
The church, which represents about 97 percent of Greece's 11 million population, did not rule out the possibility of calling on Greeks to protest outside of theaters.
Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou star in Ron Howards's movie, taken from Dan Brown's controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code.
Lost sales from pirated DVD movies and Internet downloads are higher than previously thought, a report in the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
A study showed the industry was losing US$6.1 billion annually in global wholesale revenue, about 75 percent higher than earlier estimates, it said.
Losses came not only from fewer ticket sales, but also from fewer DVD sales, considered one of the industry's biggest profit centers, the report cited unnamed sources as saying.
The newspaper said some in the US movies industry sought to suppress the report.
According to the report, losses in the US alone totaled almost US$1.3 billion.
John Malkovich's new film has him playing an Englishman who pretends he is Stanley Kubrick in what is billed as a "true-ish" story about a conman who duped dozens of people into thinking he was the reclusive director.
Colour me Kubrick, showing at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, has already drawn comparisons to Being John Malkovich because of its cerebral approach to questions of identity and celebrity.
But it is essentially a comedy that gives Malkovich the chance to revel in outlandish accents, behavior and costumes, from stockings and stilettos to oversized pajamas and foppish suits and cravats. The soundtrack echoes Kubrick's own films, including the famous theme from 2001: Space Odyssey.
Alan Conway, an alcoholic and small-time swindler, managed to pass himself off as the famously publicity-shy Kubrick for years until he was unmasked by a newspaper. Even then he convinced psychiatrists he was mentally ill, escaping prosecution for duping dozens of gullible victims into parting with their cash and sometimes their virtue.
"Everybody believed it," said Michael Fitzgerald, who produced the film written by Kubrick's personal assistant Anthony Frewin.
"Stanley Kubrick's wife still gets letters from parents of young men who were, what's the word, `pleasured' by him, regretting his death, but saying he had done unspeakable things to their children," he said.
With his debonair look, eccentric outfits and gift of the gab, Conway takes in everyone from the local pharmacist, to the managers of a heavy metal band, to a comedian played by British star Jim Davidson.
The biologist in Randy Olson cringed at news reports of evangelical Christians challenging the teaching of evolution to schoolchildren in places such as Kansas on the grounds it was just a theory.
But the filmmaker in him feels just as strongly that scientists have done a lousy job explaining their side of the debate.
The result is Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus, a humorous and entertaining documentary that premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this week.
The film shines a spotlight on "intelligent design," a school of thought that says many of the seemingly miraculous and complex elements of nature must be the work of an intelligent designer -- namely God.
The controversy is raging in the US as intelligent design proponents face off in court with scientists who say evolution is supported by fossils and other evidence. So far, courts have struck down teaching intelligent design in science classrooms as a violation of the wall between church and state.
Other films that premiered at the festival include Fat Girls by the youngest film director at this year's event, 21-year-old Ash Christian. Christian is living proof that being a chubby gay kid from Paris, Texas, doesn't mean you can't direct and star in a movie. Fat Girls is a semi-autobiographical comedy about awkward Texas teenager, Rodney, and his friend, Sabrina, who is so fat that in a moment of passion with her boyfriend in a car, her rear end gets stuck in the steering wheel.
Donald Sutherland has played plenty of bad guys in his time and in his new film Land of the Blind he gets to explore the roots of evil and how the victim can become the tyrant and torturer. The political satire, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, stars Sutherland as an imprisoned playwright who convinces a soldier, played by Ralph Fiennes, to help assassinate a tyrannical dictator in an unnamed country.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
RSS